Rachel Zucker is a unicorn: She is a famous living poet. Or maybe I should say, famous for a living poet. Obscurity is a badge of honor among many poets I know, who seem to see their art as operating on a unique ethereal level. In my MFA program at NYU, the poets always look at the novelists the way a selfless social worker might look at a craven hedge-fund manager. The poet’s art is for art’s sake, and their obscurity is the ironclad proof.

Thus, when Zucker was invited in January 2015 to speak to our low-residency MFA class in Paris (Paris, I know; I try not to ask a lot of questions lest NYU realize how deliciously extravagant it is), a ripple shot through the circle of poets. “Who is she?” a few of us novelists asked. She, it turned out, was a poet so dizzyingly famous that she had earned a profile in The New Yorker—this was imparted in the hushed tones of both awe and scandal. Having missed the profile, myself—and, well, almost all poetry and poetry-related happenings in their entirety in the modern era (and if I’m being really honest, in any era)—I came to Zucker a tabula rasa.

Or so I thought. For I also came to her as the hassled mother of a small child. The week before, as I prepared to leave for Paris, I had fetishized my flight—eager to be alone in a steel tube hurtling over the ocean, unable to nurture another soul for a solid seven hours in which my only “job” was to sit quietly in a chair. Heaven. And when Zucker began to read “I’d Like a Little Flashlight”—

and I’d like to get naked and into bed and be hot radiating heat from the inside these sweaters and fleeceys do nothing to keep out the out or keep my vitals in—some drafty body I’ve got leaking in and out in all directions I’d like to get naked into bed but hot

I knew then: Not only was I not a tabula rasa uncompromised by knowledge of her, I was in fact Zucker’s long-lost sister. We’d never met, but I knew her in my bones.

As she read, I was rapt. A wrenching detail about a sensory-deprivation tank (a place “to do what? play dead and not die?”) brought my tears forward. And by the end, Zucker had given me exactly what she described—“oh look here a bright spot of life, oh look another!”

She opened me up to her work and to poetry more broadly, which in this month of poetry is something I am very excited to honor. Because now, I think, maybe it is true: Maybe those poets do operate on a higher level:“But hot.”

“I’d Like a Little Flashlight” is certainly worth reading, but there’s something about hearing Zucker read it that, for this overcommitted writerly mother, was quite simply transcendent.

I always thought I was missing some important maternal chip in my system, some crucial feminine widget in my consciousness that was supposed to look at childbirth as simply beautiful—as the most natural thing in the world. Instead, long into adulthood, my overwhelming feeling toward the act of giving birth was something along the lines of: You want me to push what out of where?!

Ashley Lauretta’s wonderful piece for us this week, “Too Afraid to Have a Baby,” mentions that Helen Mirren was scarred by a childhood viewing of an educational film on the topic. I feared childbirth from the moment I heard how it was done; I don’t remember ever not thinking it sounded ghastly. But I too had my own filmstrip moment that pushed me further over the edge.

In my mid-20s, I saw an episode of Susan “Stop the Insanity” Powter’s short-lived talk show (please do not feel obliged to remember Susan Powter) about nightmare-childbirth scenarios. One guest on the show suffered something so completely horrific, I dare not write it. Suffice it to say, she had to go through several corrective surgeries and receive hundreds of stitches—down there.

Do I sound immature? I felt immature. I also felt rational. That maternal chip I was missing was really a blind spot. Other women could not see the obvious flaws of natural childbirth, but I was cursed with perfect vision.

When I became pregnant at 37, I could feel my due date hurtling toward me like a runaway train. Maybe I could have an elective C-section. I read up on the procedure—too many people have it, hospitals and doctors are too quick to turn to it, it’s driving up health-care costs, it’s selfish, the baby will be bathed in drugs …

As I read, I was not chastened. Instead, I thought, So it’s do-able.

The other women in my mommy pace group would smile at me serenely, beatified by their holy cargo. I’d be fine, they’d assure me. It wouldn’t be bad at all, they promised. I didn’t have the heart to tell them about their childbearing blind spots.

I screwed up my courage and confessed my fears to my doctor. “I’m not sure I can do it,” I cried. “OK, let’s schedule a C-section,” she replied without missing a beat. Yes! She was one of those doctors I’d read about who handed out surgery like candy. She told me that at my age, the chance of ending up with a C-section was already increased because more things go wrong the older the mother is. Given that, she said, she always prefers to schedule procedures than to end up with emergency C-sections—which, obviously, no one plans for. She also said that being in a fevered panic about childbirth was no way to, well, experience childbirth—not to mention it was a pretty poor way to be pregnant; after all, my stress was probably being transmitted to the child inside me.

So as far as my doctor was concerned, it was a no-brainer. Science!

But I still dared not tell a soul. I knew what the world saw: I wasn’t doing it the right way, the best way. I was a selfish, scared, immature crazy person.

Then, as I neared the end of my pregnancy, my baby didn’t turn around; he was breech—a common reason to need a C-section. My doctor and I laughed. “So I’m legit?” I said. Since then, if my C-section ever comes up in conversation (which is far less often the more distance from the event I get), I say, “He was breech”—as though I had no choice in the matter. But I did have a choice. And I actively chose.

Now I don’t look back on the day I gave birth as one in which I was tearful and totally terrified, thinking only of the cruel physics of what was about to happen. Now I remember every detail of that happy spectacular day with joy. Because it was all about my son.

Tens of thousands of people are holding up lighters—frighteningly close to enough hairspray and oil-based makeup to level the whole city. The lights have dropped and in the edgy, anticipatory concert buzz, there is an occasional cheer or whistle. Glittering purple light and smoke slowly fill the stadium. The crowd is going bananas. A guitar chord is struck and the screams become even more urgent. It seems like it lasts minutes—glittering purple, the smell of dry ice, a chord, screams. Over and over. But then:

“I never meant to cause you any sorrow…”

At last. It is magical. That little Minnesotan maharajah holds everyone captive to his truth: The color of the rain is purple, people.

And we are better for it.

I was 11, and Prince was my first concert. (My friend’s much-older sister took us with her. It was a real Cinderella-at-the-ball moment for me—if shoulder pads were ball gowns and the prince were Prince, and more of an androgynous oversexed nymph with eyeliner.) I had internalized the album, of course—the straightforward insanity of “Let’s Go Crazy,” the quixotic “When Doves Cry,” the dry-humping cri de coeur of “Darling Nikki”—I knew them all.

Confusing my Prince enthusiasm for an adorable obsession most girls my age might have (like for Menudo), my father rented the movie Purple Rain. Needless to say, Purple Rain, featuring Apollonia and the truly fantastic Morris Day and the Time, was not a cute boy-band musical. My dad fast-forwarded through the sex scenes only to land on a drug scene. He was horrified. I felt worldly.

I tried to keep up with Prince. I bought Around the World in a Day and, later, even Diamonds and Pearls. But nothing will ever be as magical as the Purple Rain album, the Purple Rain concert, or the “Purple Rain” song.

Prince was unique. He challenged expectations about rock music, about gender, about race, about sex, about fashion, about art. His challenge to labels brought the world “the artist formerly known as”—and embedded a meme into the culture without even using the Internet. He was nothing if not aggressive about transcending category. He played the Superbowl. He won an Oscar. He bitch-slapped the music industry. He inspired Dave Chappelle. He rocked a goddamn look.

Tonight, I’m going to play that one-of-a-kind album and imagine Prince—laughing in the purple rain.

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